Bearings in wind turbines often suffer from brittle flaking which results in premature failure of the bearings. This may result in an expensive exchange of parts of the bearings or the bearing as a whole. Brittle flaking is believed to be caused by a combination of rolling fatigue loads and the presence of diffusible hydrogen. The hydrogen is released from used lubricant when the service conditions result in a decomposition of the lubricant. The service conditions which decompose the lubricant can be caused by currents running through the bearing. Furthermore, the decomposition of the lubricant can be caused by tribo-chemical, tribo-mechanical and tribo-physical conditions under severe loading.
An aspect is to provide a way to avoid, or at least to reduce atomic hydrogen to diffuse into a component of a wind turbine.